WHEN YOU CAN'T SAY A WORLD YOU CAN SMILE

(this is my smile)

I was in Brooklyn, NY - preached a few sermons and then headed to the "beyond" (know to Shawn Brace as Vermont).  

Looking down from the Rockefeller Center.

Friends in high places (little joke).

Part of seeing and skiing Vermont was eating lunch with Shawn.

Really... this felt better than it looks.  

FOR REFLECTION

A couple of weeks ago in the windy city of Chicago, a teenage boy found his way into role call for patrol at the Grand Crossing District police station. The news reports mentioned that it wasn’t until hours later that a sergeant observed the young man and questioned him.

I have worked with police departments and have been through role call and patrol shifts; there is such a “sense of guard,” that masquerading of any kind would be very difficult. It serves to protect against would be impersonators and the situations that might arise. It is in the steady rhythm of the everyday that one or a community might find it easiest to drop that guard and become the most vulnerable.

While learning the procedure of a traffic stop, I was required to watch a video recorded by the dash camera of a police car on a “routine” traffic stop. In that video a Georgia officer was gunned down and to this day the sounds and images are still indelibly written on my mind and the lesson learned never to view a traffic stop as simply “routine.”

I fear that unless we realize today, and everyday, that the devil is “a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour,” (1Peter5:8) we will be complacent in the routine and the devil will wait for the circumstance or the moment our guard is dropped, and destroy us.

I submit for your protection, habitual time with Jesus.